


Not a Soulmate, But Not Just a Franchise

by magelette



Category: Roswell (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 11:24:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13293831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magelette/pseuds/magelette
Summary: This wasn't a coffee shop romance. This was a freakin Tim Hortons, and he was no Prince Charming. But Maria didn't realize that Michael and his Tim Hortons were exactly what she needed in her life.





	Not a Soulmate, But Not Just a Franchise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alianora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alianora/gifts).



All her life, Maria DeLuca had wanted a soulmate, someone who understood her inside and out. Someone who could read her like a book, who would fight at her side, who would touch every part of her inner being and turn her into one of those quivering, orgasmic heroines in her mom’s romance novels. But as a kid, she’d also dreamed of knights in shining armor—her, not the boy—and kicking the ass of each and every bad guy in the galaxy. So far, she wasn’t doing too well on the childhood dream front.

She was thirty-four now. Her years of working at the Crashdown as a teenager had taken her to bartending to pay her way through BA and Masters in Social Work, so that she could work for the State and counsel people on how they really shouldn’t do drugs and alcohol. Instead of saving the galaxy, blaster in hand, or running from the FBI, she spent most of her time doing paperwork and trying—trying!—to keep idiots from killing themselves. Unless she killed them first. At least she’d moved away from Roswell, New Mexico. So now, instead of fake alien heads everywhere, she had to deal with hockey fanatics and people with Opinions about pizza and wings. Like, actual opinions. Like pizza and wings were food groups. As a child of Senor Chow’s green tea burritos and her mom’s incredible carbonada criolla—the only authentic Argentinian part of Amy DeLuca—Maria would never join the Dark Side of upstate New York food groups.

So much for her visions of being a self-rescuing princess or kicking ass as a secret agent. When she wasn’t meeting with clients or filling out paperwork, she downed cup after cup of mediocre coffee at a mediocre coffee shop. Scratch that. She didn’t even have a coffee shop. She had a Tim Hortons franchise run by Michael, a failed whatever-he-was with hair fresh out of the 90s and a mouth that riled her temper in ways her clients thankfully never did.

It was bad enough that they saw each other every weekday, and sometimes on weekends, because the wifi at the Tim Hortons was more reliable than her internet at home. Plus, Michael’s ‘coffee shop’ was conveniently located halfway between the bumfuck town she worked in and the bumfuck town she lived in, which meant it broke up her commute down endless hilly country roads. And, weirdly, the company was decent. There were a handful of regulars who hung out in front of the fake fireplace, always making sure they snagged the comfortable black pleather chairs. Izzy, the lawyer she occasionally worked with/against, knew to save Maria a seat at the big round coffee table nearest the electrical outlet if Maria was running late, and vice versa. And Michael, for all his big mouth and bigger opinions about the county and how shitty it was to its poorer residents, could always be counted on to honor the free refills, whether or not Maria brought in her Tim Hortons travel mug.

The coffee wasn’t the best, the location wasn’t Paris or London, and the company was somewhat dubious—but at least recently-bathed—but it was still her life. And weirdly, she loved it. As a child of the desert and winter rains, she loved how water fell from the sky in every season and in a million different forms. Her skin cracked in winter til she had to smother it in the coconut and avocado cream that her mother sent every month, scented with essential oils to keep her calm, but she flourished here in ways that she hadn’t at home. She had no history here. She wasn’t the daughter of teenage single-mom Amy DeLuca, and she wasn’t the town charity case who relied on glitter and her Bedazzler to remake the clothes her mom bought at the local Salvation Army shop. She was Maria. She was “Goddammit, Maria, why the hell are you still here? I need to close!” and “Why the fuck did you drive in a freaking white-out, you moron! You could’ve killed yourself?”, but she was Maria. Without a past. Without a future saving the galaxy, but she still helped where she could. Small victories.

“I almost became a social worker,” Michael admitted once as she helped him wipe down the tables after closing one night. It was her way of repaying him for letting her stay a little later, letting her eat the last of that day's doughnuts, letting her rant a little longer than she should have about that teenage father she hadn't been able to save from himself.

“Almost?” For all their yelling at each other over the past couple years, they’d become friends, of sorts. Maria actually paused as she turned the chair upside down on the table. She’d been curious about Michael’s past, but they’d never divulged anything. Because that would mean they were. Friends.

Michael ran his hand through his amazing gravity-defying hair, which made it stick up like a brown haystack around his face. Maria wondered what he used on it, sometimes. She had to torture her own blond curls with Deva Curl every morning to keep them under control, until they almost formed a yellow helmet around her head. She almost missed the extensions she’d worn in high school, or her old pixie cut.

“I was a kid like the ones you see sometimes. Foster kid. In and out of the system. Broken home. Y'know, all that after school special crap.” He knew, vaguely, that she dealt not only with addicts, but their children as well. He didn’t know why she saw them, about her dad and the alcohol poisoning and the car accident and her mom kicking her dad out when Maria was only seven, but he knew that her work wasn’t limited to adults. She hadn’t know he was like her, a little. Or a lot.

She’d raised a careful eyebrow at him, but followed her best instincts and actually kept quiet. Michael actually quirked a grin at that. “Hurricane DeLuca’s got nothing to say?” he joked.

“Hurricane DeLuca has a quiet eye every now and then,” she retorted back. “Plus, no normal childhood would ever produce hair like yours.”

He smirked at her, brown eyes crinkling at the corners, and damn, did she hate it when he did that. Because it only reminded her how wonderful-looking and earthy he was, fro-boy hair and all.

“So, why the almost?” she finally asked when they’d moved on to another table. She wiped it down with a vinegar-smelling rag after her bussed the last of the coffee and doughnut dishes off of it.

“Too much paperwork,” he said finally. “I got through most of my classes and was interning, but it was…” He didn’t need to say anything else. His pinched mouth and frown lines on his forehead said it all. She knew. She’d hit burnout about four times now and had to talk herself back pretty much every time she wrote up her resignation letter. She wasn’t saving the world; she wasn’t even saving any trees, from all the paperwork she filled out. And her hours and hours of time and energy and emotion didn’t pay off the way they’d promised in grad school. Help people, they said. Give back to the world. Except the world tended to shit all over you and they never said how much it would hurt to see people destroy themselves.

“My dad self-destructed.” She wasn’t sure why she admitted that, but the words fell from her mouth before she knew what she was saying. “Mom threw him out when I was a kid and he drove away, full of promises to come back with puppies and ponies. And he never came back. He just...self-destructed.”

Her mom almost had, too. Apparently the threat of child endangerment and almost losing custody of Maria had paid off, because a year after her dad died in his second fiery car crash, some state agency decided that Amy DeLuca deserved the insurance windfall. A tacky UFO souvenir shop and a decade later, Amy DeLuca was an upstanding citizen and new wife of the Roswell sheriff. An almost functional member of society, if still slightly crazy and prone to conspiracy theories.

Michael nodded. She wasn’t sure what he was agreeing with, but the pained look on his face told her he knew. He knew something about being the poorest kid in school, the local charity case, the kid of delinquents. If he wasn’t a delinquent himself. She could almost see that: pierced eyebrow, leather jacket, tight jeans and battered Docs. God, she could see that, especially with that hair…

“So you run a Tim Hortons,” she said finally as they stacked the last chairs on the last clean table.

“Own,” he corrected, a slight smile on his face. “This is a franchise, get it right, please.”

“Not just a franchise. A cafe," she said, gesturing to the proud 'Tim Hortons Cafe and Bakery' sign over the door. "Sorry, Mr. Big Businessperson, I’ll get it right next time,” she quipped right back.

They weren’t friends…exactly.

And then there was her mom.

“So…”

Maria rolled her eyes, already anticipating the next question. Not that her mom could see her, since they were talking on the phone and not FaceTiming. Thank god.

So she mouthed the words as her mother actually spoke them. “Are you dating someone?” 

They talked every week, because even though they lived almost a continent apart so that she wouldn’t commit matricide or step-patricide (or step-fratricide for that matter), Maria still loved her mom more than anything on earth. It wasn’t just the sacrifices her mom had made as a single pretty-much-teen mother (how many tropes could she meta out of her own life?), but her mom’s strength of character. Not everyone could run a tacky alien-themed gift shop in Roswell, NM, and still carry on serious conversations about ancient aliens and contrail conspiracies.

Most conversations with her mom consisted of updates on her childhood friends who still lived in Roswell; her stepfather the sheriff who usually arrested her childhood friends for drunk-driving and other minor infractions; and her stepbrother, the high school baseball coach, who was usually the instigator of the pranks all their friends were arrested for (Really, Kyle? Did you really have to take the cow out in front of the Dairy Queen for a ride in your pickup?). They were thirty-four years old, for fuck’s sake. Most of her friends from high school were married and/or divorced, with or without children or dogs or ferrets. She left as soon as she could, because she’d always sworn that there had to be something better out there for her than Roswell, New Mexico. Better than hanging out at the Crashdown or Senor Chow’s or any of the other hokey-ass places she’d grown up with in the same claustrophobic town she’d known since she was born. She wondered sometimes, though, if ignorance was bliss, and she would’ve been happier in Roswell, alien conspiracy theories and all. But destiny and a scholarship to a college out-of-state called her elsewhere.

“So?” Usually her mom could be distracted. Usually. All it took was a carefully-timed question, asking for an expansion on Kyle’s girlfriend’s cute Australian accent, or how many times Jim had arrested Grace Cohen for blowing her DUI tests and crashing into the stop sign at Alameda and Main.

“So what?” Maria hated how easily Mom could sidetrack her and vice versa. She’d always prided herself on her fast-talking skills and her ability to redirect a conversation, but that never worked with her mom. Maybe because her mom was the master, and Maria herself would always be the lowly apprentice. 

“Are. You. Dating. Someone,” her mom carefully enunciated. Maria could almost see her mom’s brown eyes rolling, same as Maria’s own green ones (guess where she’d learned that from?).

‘No’ was on her lips, her automatic response. But then the strangest thing happened. Maybe it was alien possession. Maybe it was fatigue and the fact that she was counseling two generations of alcoholics now, mother and daughter, in back-to-back appointments. Maybe it was the weird sense of loneliness and lack of belonging in her life, for all that she had a handful of friends (acquaintances) here.

For the first time since she’d moved out of New Mexico, Maria actually paused to consider the question.

“Define ‘dating.’”

Her mom’s squeal could probably be heard a mile away as Maria drove between work and home.

“Who is he—or she—“ Maria never knew if her mom actually knew about the whole thing with Liz over Christmas vacation their first year of college, but Amy had always been a bit more hip to sexuality and gender roles than most parents.

“We’re friends, Mom. Don’t get too excited. Geez.”

“Friends friends? Do you _like_ like him? Is there sex involved?” She could just see the glee on her mom’s face.

“Mom, chill!”

Sometimes, her mom was way too intense.

And sometimes, her mom was completely awesome.

“So? Tell me about them! Are they cute? Do you work with them? Do you see a long-term future with them? Can I meet them?”

Yep, today was one of those intense days.

“Mom!” Maria toyed with the idea of faking bad reception, especially because she swore the windmills on this part of 285 South canceled out all the fancy cell phone towers they’d installed around Thompson Corners. 

She let her mom babble on for a few minutes and then actually breathed a sigh of relief as she pulled into the parking lot of her home away from home. Tim Hortons never looked so good. Especially since she knew Michael was waiting inside for her. It was Wednesday after all.

“Mom! I've got a client waiting for me. I gotta go.”

“I thought you were driving,” her mom said as Maria turned off the car. She reminded herself never to call her mom over Bluetooth again, even if it did mean breaking state laws.

“I’m driving…to meet a client,” Maria said slowly.

“You’re going to that coffee shop place, aren’t you? Oh my god, are you dating the guy who owns the coffee shop? The one who answered your phone that one time and sounded so Canadian? Eh? He sounds so cute! Oh, Maria, you should—“

Maria accidentally on purpose pressed the red hang-up button and threw her phone back in her messenger bag. With a sigh, she gathered up her armfuls of paperwork and other detritus crap and hauled her life into her sanctuary.

A Tim Hortons.

Michael actually gave her a welcoming grin as she walked in, waving at her as he explained to a customer that, no, they didn’t carry gluten-free macaroons, that was the Tim Hortons over the border in Canada. She watched as his smile froze in place, the lines around his mouth getting tighter and tighter as the customer got more and more insistent that she'd had a coconut macaroon _right here_ two years ago and she'd driven all the way from Olean for it. Maria couldn't help snickering as she caught Michael's sardonic eye. She knew she’d be in for an earful later. She wasn’t sure when, exactly, she’d started helping close the place down, but most nights, it was their routine, and it felt…right.

Were they dating?

“Are we dating?” she blurted out as soon as he came over with her usual coffee and cruller doughnut.

“Are we what now?” Michael sputtered, looking like a 16 year old punk caught with a magazine of dubious quality.

“Are. We. Dating.” She enjoyed the dumbfounded, jaw-dropping look on his face way more than she should have. “My mom wants to know.”

“Sure?” The fact that he answered with a question and a ton of confusion only increased her glee.

She couldn’t help it. She laughed. Maybe slightly hysterically. “Oh, my God! Oh my god,” she crowed, laughing so hard that tears streamed down her face. “I’m dying here! This is so uncharacteristic!”

“You’re also freaking the other customers out,” Michael said, eyes narrowing and chin jutting out in anger.

That only made her laugh harder. “Other customers? Who, Gluten-Free Lady? Are you kidding?” She laughed so hard she was shaking.

And then he leaned in and kissed her.

There were no fireworks. Okay, there was definitely fire. And maybe some work to be done. Damn, he needed to stop licking his lips and getting them all chapped. But there was comfort. And familiarity. And a little bit of tongue. Oooh, she liked that…

When they stopped, she stared at him as if she’d never seen him before.

“That was to calm you down,” he told her, his face just as wide-eyed and breathless as she felt.

“Thanks” was all she could come up with to say back.

He hesitated, then said, “Was that okay?”

She countered with, “Are we dating?”

“I’d certainly hope so,” the only audience to their little spectacle said from her table across from Maria’s usual seat by the fake fireplace. But apparently the combined power of DeLuca and Guerin glares had no effect on her.

Maria couldn’t help laughing again. And to her surprise, Michael joined her. He had a nice laugh. A laugh she’d like to hear more of. In addition to the smirk she’d love to kiss off his face in the morning.

“So there’s this pizza place in town…” Michael began, but seeing the beginning of her eyeroll, he amended, “that I’d never take you to because it’s total crap, but I hear there’s a new Chinese place opening up.”

“Keep talking,” she said as she grabbed his hand and pulled him down into Izzy’s usual chair. He did own the place. He had a right to sit there if he wanted.

He wasn’t a knight in shining armor, or an alien prince, or even a wealthy businessperson who would keep her in comfort for the rest of her life. He was broken and barely put back together. He was an asshole grin and a bad haircut, but he was Michael.

And apparently he was hers.

**Author's Note:**

> For you, my dove, for eighteen years. You know why.


End file.
